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Porsche Club of America
The Northeast Region

Pit Pass

By Bill Chadwick
NOR'EASTER Online - May 2005
Northeast Region Logo

There has been a lot happening in the last month so in this edition I have three topics to share, The car exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston , the Road Atlanta club race and thoughts on race/DE in car decision making.
   
Speed, Style, and Beauty: Cars from the Ralph Lauren Collection is a wonderful exhibit I visited with my family yesterday.  While not overly large showing about a dozen vehicles the exhibit more than delivers on its title and is well worth viewing.  I highly recommend renting the audio tour guide headsets as it shares many facts over and above those on each cars individual information cards. For instance you get to hear from World Champion Phil Hill that the he purchased the 1938 Alpha Romeo you are viewing when it was thirteen years old and brought it to the US and won with it the first time out against much newer hardware.
   
For weekend visits I would recommend buying your tickets on line ahead of time at http://www.mfa.org/   by doing so we were able to walk right in and bypass a line of at least fifty people at the ticket counter. Featured exhibits have a viewing time window, meaning your ticket allows you and a set number of other ticket holders into the gallery during a specific time period this prevent overcrowding and a poor experience. It is very possible that on a weekend you could arrive and the windows could be filled if you do not get your tickets in advance. I would further recommend a MFA membership. The discounts at the restaurants, bookshop and parking garage are substantial. Lastly my mother was splurging on her grandchildren so we had reservations and ate at the very fine Bravo Restaurant on the second floor. My choices were lobster and clam chowder, lamb stew and dark chocolate mousse pyramid with raspberry BAM!!. After visits to the featured gallery and the bookstore which where operating at capacity it was very nice to sit in a spacious dining room and enjoy a relaxed and very high quality meal.
   
The Road Atlanta Club race was somewhat of a disappointment to myself and I’m sure many other racers. Unfortunately this was a weather challenged event. The Friday track run test and tune was a wash out in the morning but we did get some sessions in during the afternoon under cold and overcast skies. Saturday was partly cloudy with high winds and temperatures in the low fifties. There were a great number of incidents with the result we got very little practice time. Cold tires and rusty racers at an early season event seem to really bring out the worst results in PCA Club Racing. I would guesstimate that there were at least fifteen cars damaged on Saturday and mine was one of them (very minor) due to getting punted. I so love spending an hour and a half writing reports and showing the steward video so I can keep racing and not have to pack up and drive home one thousand miles! Many drivers did have to pack up and that fact expands on the old saying you can’t win a race in the first lap but you sure can lose it. In PCA that statement expands to all the pre-race practices also even if the damage is minor but you are found at fault. 
   
A quick review of the results sheets show the following familiar names, as always please let me know if I miss any locals so I can do better next time.
   
GT3S Chris Musante 2nd in a nine car class, and Steve Burlack unfortunately having a DNF. Wal Jarvis was 1st and Greg Brown 4th in the seven car GT2R field. Mike Trombly was 4th in E out of fifteen cars. Barry Brensinger was 2nd in a B class and only a tad off the class winner’s times. In the thirty car GTC3 class New Yorker Keith Alexander was 3rd and Paul Orwicz was 5th. Steve Keneally was all alone in GT1S but was running very respectable times. Lastly I won GT1R out of six starters but fell from my 4th place qualifying position to a disappointing 7th overall. 
 
I’m going to conclude with an essay on the mental and physical aspects of high performance driving and how I understand them in relationship to my personal driving habits.
   
Athletic ability and senses is something we are all blessed with to a greater or lesser extent. Through training and practice we can hone these skills. Probably the greatest example of a person with moderate natural skills that honed them through practice and hard work to reach the top of his sport is Carl Yazstremski.
  
In driving we use most of the basic sensory skills we are born with vision, hearing and the ability of our nerves to give us feedback. Examples of feedback being how we feel the front tires slipping through the steering wheel or how soon we sense the back end stepping out and our hand speed reaction time to make the steering impute to catch it. Another example is the ability to learn the brake pressure we can apply just short of lock up and then how well we can duplicate that amount of force on the bake pedal and make adjustments to it as conditions change during the course of a session, such as track temperature and tire wear.
   
What I find to be the most interesting part of athletic ability is how we use our mental capabilities to analyze what are senses are giving us and make plans and decisions to be executed. The easiest ones for me are the line changes when I’m running alone. I’m approaching a corner and I remember I was not able to get all the power down until well after the apex. DECISION I’m going to turn in later and apply more power. RISK BENEFIT, if I get it wrong my skill set will allow me to correct if I’m going to go off. If I get it right I pick up 4/10’s  VISUALIZE See the corner from my memory bank see new turn in point and what I want to see coming off the apex. EXECUTE. Why is this the easiest of the decisions? It is done way in advance in a low stress area. When I’m really on my game I can be on the strait to turn 1 and if I have 1, 2, and 3 pretty well down I will be thinking of 4 and make my plan, file it and then do 1-2-3 as before and then execute the new plan for 4 when I get there. Where this gets more difficult is if there is traffic in 4 when I get there. If I get traffic in that corner for the next couple of laps sometimes the new line plan will not click when I do get there a with a clear track. I get very perturbed with myself when if forget like this as is dawns on me as I’m coming off the corner that I had a better plan and did not use it 

Situational awareness
Here are two example of situational awareness the first is how it should go and the second is how it should not, the second is an actual experience from last weekend.
   
One of the most pleasurable and exciting experiences for me in racing is the visualization and execution of plans in traffic during a race or practice. Here is an example of one of the most difficult moves I have made. I’m going down the strait and up ahead I spy a slower car. My time distance computer (brain) starts to take measurements as I recognize the car and the fact from past experience it is significantly slower than I in the corners. My analysis is that I won’t catch him in time to establish position in the brake zone for the first left hander, but we are approaching a left-right combination followed by a short strait and another right hander. By the way, a fast competitor that is giving me trouble is eight car lengths in back of me. VISUALIZE-PLAN slow a little early and time catching this slower car in front as he turns left for the throw away corner: get on power at limit of adhesion and pass him on the outside. Brake establish position on inside for the right hander and turn using most of track out after apex but leave him little room  checking mirror in case he his dense, if he is not in mirror off left rear corner of car add more power and track out all the way. If spacing is right the guy that is following me will get hung behind slower car through next corner.
   
Risk Benefit: Am I comfortable around the driver of the slower car? Does my memory bank of experience from past moves in traffic say this is doable? Yes go for it and put distance on competition, or he is unknown or an idiot, or memory bank says distance between left and right is too short, forget it and go defensive on the guy behind. 
   
Decision and Excute: Turn 5 at Road Atlanta is a high speed left I take in third gear. There is then a nice strait followed by turn 6  and 7 a horse shoe shape 6 requires hard braking and is quick in third gear, followed almost immediately by 7 a sharp right that needs firm braking a downshift to 2nd and a good line and launch as it leads out onto the longest strait! As I exit turn 5 onto the strait there are two Cup cars separated by about forty yards. They have both moved to the left side as the next corner a right. I easily catch and pass the first car (blue) and put some distance on him, but will not get the second Cup car (white) before the brake zone. I stay one car width off the left side and brake planning for the leading (white) car to turn across my nose. It is his corner! VISUALIZE He turns across my nose for 6 and I follow him letting him pull out a little then I can then squirt power, brake and take a late turn in and get power down passing on the exit. 
   
Change of Plan the lead car gives me the apex of turn 6 with a point by. I squirt though the opening leaving the former lead car (white) a full car width on my outside. Do to the distance I put on the blue car on the strait and the fact I’m in a defensive position I have dismissed the blue car from my situational awareness PLAN “he has to follow me to get any kind of launch onto the one mile long strait. Why would he slow himself all the way down the strait with a re-pass move against a car that will pass and pull 200 yards on him on the next strait anyway? So I do not even look in my right side mirror. Cars that have established passing position or are even getting close to it on my right are always seen in my convex 12” wide rear view as I look for my apex/track out. 
  
Execute: I brake heal toe to 2nd gear for 7, turn in and ad power. As my right front wheel is passing the apex point crunch something hits my right rear and I’m spinning into the weeds.
   
Was my awareness of the situation wrong? Sure I got hit. Will I change my driving? I don’t think so at least not in slower corners. It is kind of Darwin like, he got a 13/13 penalty he learns not to stick it in or sits out a year next time. Why anyone would want to be on the far right of the track on the entry of a sharp right hand corner leading to the longest strait is beyond me. This gentleman called to apologize which was nice. When I outlined what my PLAN was before the (white) car pointed me by and asked why he did not make the pass that way? He said “that would mean thinking”. OK…..
   
To conclude, the more that we drive a track the mechanics naturally become unconscious. Then our conscious mind can have time to critique and imagine and EVALUATE scenarios to possible implement allowing us to make changes to improve our time and or deal with other cars. It all comes down to seat time something denied to us by black flags caused by driving at a level where we are not thinking. GOD please help me not to screw up.
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